Asylum seeker housing managed by for-profit prison guards? Why not

The UK Border Agency invites the company that killed Jimmy Mubenga to manage housing for vulnerable asylum seekers

The government’s ‘preferred bidders’ for contracts to
house vulnerable asylum seekers are Reliance Security and two multinational
security companies — G4S and Serco — best known for immigration prisons,
forcible deportations and failings in their duty of care to vulnerable people.

Asylum seekers and their advocates fear a further advance
in the UK government’s punitive policies towards asylum seekers. From an
asylum seeker’s point of view UKBA’s threat to install prison guard companies
as their managing landlords feels intimidating. It is further evidence of
British governments’ deterrence view of asylum seekers. Treating them really
badly will deter others arriving and seeking sanctuary.

Asylum seekers living in housing threatened by a G4S
takeover in the Yorkshire region where I live are not criminals who deserve
prison guards as their landlords but families and individuals fleeing from
persecution, claiming their rights under international treaties signed by the our
government.

G4S is
not a landlord, but a private security army

G4S are perhaps known to many people as the firm who read
gas and electricity meters, empty cash machines, and police local sporting and
other events.

In fact they are the world’s largest private security army
– they are for instance responsible for ‘security’ at Doncaster airport but
also have been responsible for ‘security’ at Baghdad airport, and for guarding
diplomats at Kabul airport and throughout Afghanistan.

Here in Britain they have been awarded, alongside 13,500
British regular troops, an aircraft carrier, typhoon jets and missiles, a ‘security’
contract of £100 million for the London Olympics,
providing 10,000 guards to patrol venues.

G4S are the second largest private employer in the world
and the largest employer quoted on the London Stock Exchange. They have managed
prisons in the United States, guarded oil and gas installations in Nigeria, and
provided brutal prison guards in South Africa. G4S prison guards have a
notorious reputation in Australia.

UKBA maintain that the new asylum housing contracts are
going to partners with a proven track record. What is this track record in the
UK?

In 2011 G4S managed 675 court and police station cells,
they manage four detention centres for asylum seekers and since the summer of
2011 they manage the brand new ‘family friendly’ Cedars detention centre at
Pease Pottage near Gatwick, which has already been criticised for its treatment
of families. In December last year in a ‘Private Eye’ report UKBA defended the lack
of access to independent medical advice at Cedars, saying the centre was not
‘registered under the Detention Centre Rules as it is not a removal centre’. Thus
the new centre managed by G4S with the involvement of children’s charity
Barnado’s actually gives families fewer rights than they had in the old Yarl’s
Wood or Tinsley House detention centres. (Private Eye 1303 December 9 to 22, 2011 p.31)

G4S holds existing contracts to transport and disperse
asylum seekers and until 2011 provided the escorts for the forcible deportation
of asylum seekers. G4S lost this contract because of its appalling record.

Also in
October 2010 Jimmy Mubenga an Angolan asylum seeker
died as a result ‘restraint’ by G4S guards during his forced deportation. Two
of the guards face criminal charges and G4S are still waiting to hear whether
they face corporate manslaughter charges.

In
July 2011 Amnesty International published a damning report “Out Of Control: The case for a complete
overhaul of enforced removals by private contractors”. A
“complete and radical overhaul and reform of the current system is now
required to enable the UK Government to meet its legal obligations to
protect people against human rights abuses,” said Amnesty. “Reforms must
drastically improve the training, monitoring, accountability, and
techniques employed during enforced removals.”

Just
the other day on January 25 the Home Affairs Select Committee enquiry set up after Jimmy Mubenga’s death in G4S
custody found evidence of: “Inappropriate use of physical
restraint, and the possible use of unauthorised and potentially dangerous
restraint techniques. Weaknesses in passing on information about detainees’
medical conditions to all the relevant staff. Use of racist language by
contractors. Use of excessive numbers of contractors staff.”

Can these people be trusted to house vulnerable asylum
seekers in safety and dignity?

In 2011 a research project of London, Harvard, Hull and
Ulster Universities found that:

“The story of the UK’s
immigration detention centres is one of indignity, danger, and misery as catalogued by many authorities among them Her
Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons (numerous times), Al Aynsley Green, former
Children’s Commissioner, Bail for Immigration Detainees, Medical Justice,
Amnesty International, The Institute for Race Relations, Women for Refugee
Women, Asylum Aid and others. In the UK’s detention centres there have
been 16 suicides, alarming rates of self-harm, hunger strikes and
appalling levels of mental and physical illness. Thousands of innocent men
women and children have been put through the detention wringer and
despite Coalition pledges to end the detention of children.”

When asylum seekers are forced to work or infringe the
confusing regulations on immigration they then become ‘foreign criminals’.
Between 2007-2010, 43 foreign national prisoners committed suicide in UK
jails. Numbers committing suicide have since returned to what the
Ministry of Justice FoI officer described as ‘expected levels’. (FOI
request from International State Crime Initiative).

In Leeds in 2007 PAFRAS (Positive Action for
Refugees and Asylum Seekers) interviewed former detainees, five of
them encountered racism from staff in the detention centres from name calling
to violence.“Some of these people are very bad,” one told author Jon Burnett.
“It’s the sort of thing people don’t believe…some of them they enjoy it, they
enjoy keeping us behind bars”.

Many of the vulnerable asylum seeker families now
anxiously awaiting a decision on G4S housing contracts have direct experience
of G4S escorts and detention centre staff. It is ironic to say the least to see
that G4S is bidding for the contracts arguing that
they could actually “increase social cohesion in
local communities”.

Although G4S’s slogan is “Securing Your World” its policy
and practice is more accurately expressed by a recent description of the US
private sector detention and deportation industry.

It is estimated that current (2011) G4S earnings from
British government contracts are around £600 million — tax payers’ money
supporting prison management and security measures which one would expect to be
directly provided by the state and accountable to parliament. G4S are simply
one of the largest capitalist profit making enterprises in the world.

And of course there are massive personal gains to be made
at the top of the mega corporation. According to OurKingdom’s Clare Sambrook,
drawing upon G4S's annual report, “G4S chief executive Nick Buckles, gets a base
salary of £800,000-a-year. Then, there’s his performance-related bonus of up
to 150 per cent of that. Plus payment in shares (assuming targets are met) to
the value of twice his annual salary again. Plus there’s his £7 million pension
pot, growing by the year. Plus, on top of all that, he has an unspecified
interest in £14 million of shares in the G4S Employee Benefit Trust. And his
personal stack of shares, at today’s market price, is worth £5.9 million.”

In 2006 five-year contracts were given to a range of
private landlord companies and social landlords for housing around 35000 asylum
seekers and worth £900 million (an average of £170 million a year) (Corporate
Watch FOI request 2009).

Housing weekly ‘Inside Housing’ in 2011 through a FOI request
established that the housing contracts were worth £164 million in 2010 / 11 and
would be slashed 17% to £135.5 million in 2011/12 mainly through axing
contracts with local authority and voluntary sector providers.

In the early years of the dispersal policy (the practice initiated
by Labour of scattering asylum seekers throughout the UK) local authorities
dominated the provision and private rented landlords were in the minority.
Between 2002 and 2004 there were constant scandals: in Liverpool a private
company housed asylum seekers in properties “below
an acceptable standard. Many had insect infestations, damp and poor electrical
installations.”Asylum seekers were frequently attacked
resulting in fatalities and suicides and in 2004 six police authorities sought
to stop dispersal to their areas to prevent violence.

In 2006 Labour Immigration Minister Tony McNulty still
believed the private sector was more ‘flexible’ (and presumably cheaper). Certainly
in Sheffield the Council has described the tendering process for managing
asylum seekers housing as simply one based on cost. In Sheffield, where the
City of Sanctuary movement started, the Council still manages 60 per cent of
asylum seeker families’ homes. They are presently negotiating with the UKBA to
try and prevent dispersal of families to cheap and poor private housing should
a new contractor take over.

The demonisation of asylum seekers by politicians and the
media meant other local authorities have simply stopped applying for housing
contracts and housing associations started to pull out, as Southampton and
Wigan did in 2006. In Yorkshire and the Humber housing associations lost
contracts and pointed out the effects this had on the wellbeing of families
with disruption of children’s schooling and healthcare. In 2010 Wolverhampton
decided not to renew its contracts after Birmingham England’s largest housing
authority pulled out. Leeds was to follow.

But there was resistance, in November 2010 when an attempt
was made in Glasgow to terminate council contracts by simply sending eviction
notices an effective campaign by the Unity Centre and other community
organisations forced a total climbdown by the Home Office and an apology from
immigration minister Damien Green.

The threat of G4S management comes as part of the third
round of asylum housing contracts with security firms Serco, Reliant and of
course G4S named as preferred bidders. The potential housing managers are now
being given ‘due diligence checks’ before final contracts are signed at the end
of February. There is still time for the contracts to be scrapped by effective
campaigns at a local and regional level. Campaigners have met UKBA in Sheffield
and have been assured that the ‘due diligence’ process is a rigorous one and
submissions are welcome as part of the process. (For the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber region the email contact at COMPASS, the UKBA’s
procurement arm is neyhcompasstransition@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk) Twenty eight university researchers and teachers in the fields
of housing and immigration across Yorkshire universities have signed a letter
protesting the notion that G4S should become a landlord for asylum seekers and
their families.

In Sheffield, home to Vulcan House, the UKBA regional
centre a short march from the Town Hall, local and regional protest rallies and
demonstrations are planned on the 15 February and 1 March.

About the author

John Grayson is an independent researcher and adult educator. He is an
activist and campaigner with SYMAAG (South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum
Action Group). He writes regularly for openDemocracy and for the Institute of
Race Relations news service www.irr.org.uk

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